Bad Fae | romantasy | Bad Fae #1

Chapter Fifteen

After what I'd seen at the party, I couldn't sleep. When the others had retired to their beds, I slipped out the door and into the garden. Forest, really, where it trailed right up to the manor. Almost like the manor itself had been grown or carved or nurtured from the very forest itself.

I'd found some solace here in the previous two weeks, even if my time there had been marred by Dain's unrelenting presence. I might have happily spent time with Legacy, taking him for rides through the trees and marvelling at the way he kept up with Dain's fae steed, and telling myself that I wasn't watching every single one of Dain's muscles as he rode that horse and wondering what else he could do with them.

But this was as far as I dared go without Dain, even if it was daytime and the threat to my limbs was of much less concern. I was aware the rest of the house was sleeping and, on the off chance something did attack me, I wasn't sure even their lightning reflexes could save me in time.

I hadn't bothered to change, simply picked up a blanket from the end of my bed, slipped off my shoes and dagger, and padded outside for some fresh air. As I breathed in deeply, I wrapped my blanket tighter around me and looked up through the leaves to search for the early morning sunshine above. It winked and twinkled at me like stars in the night, enough shards shining through to make me appreciate what others called magical.

Because that was what this forest was. Magical.

I could feel it thrum, like a deep steady heartbeat in the very soul of the earth. Like the one I'd felt at the Oak. I felt it call to whatever was inside me that it recognised as its own, as though it was welcoming me home. No, not welcoming. Insisting. Drawing. A siren call, saying I was right where I was supposed to be. Where I should always have been.

With your own kind, slithered into my head as my fingers traced the pendant I never took off, but I shook the words away.

These fae were not my own kind. Even had I not been tainted by human blood, the Voidsworn would not be my kin. They couldn't be. There wasn't a murderous bone in my body.

I almost laughed at that thought.

There wasn't any part of me that could ever revel in killing.

Killing was necessary. It was efficient. There was a time and a place. That was all. Not that I had ever had the skill or knowledge to kill anything... Yet.

But my mind didn't stay long on killing as I trailed the edge of the forest near the house. I ran my hands over the deep red and green foliage and felt it come alive at my touch. Felt them lean into my fingers, like curious little animals eager for a pat.

This forest was one of the oldest in Aegrath, it was said. Stories told that it had held magic long before the return of the fae. That it had been a gateway to their Otherworld, which Dain had as much confirmed at the Oak. I wondered what it said about the fae clans that, though their High King hailed from the Henmar, the Vodreylians had been the ones given this land to watch over. I wondered what it said about Dain and his companions that they were the only sidhe who seemed to live within the Darkrealm itself.

Something sizzled in my fingers, my hand, zinging from the plants and up my arm to burst in my head like a million bright and shining stars. I felt something open, widen. Like I could hear the rustle of the wind through the branches so high above. Something skittered through the brush to my right, and I looked at it quickly. I saw nothing but perhaps the slightest shimmer of shadow against shadow.

"I could force you to sleep," came that rich deep voice with the ability to awaken my very soul.

I turned to him, wrapping myself more tightly in my blanket. As soon as my hand lost contact with the plants, that wide open feeling scattered like a dream upon waking.